It’s a week away from inauguration and around the movement we hear some common patterns. Some folks are deep in a kind of pre-anxiety — bracing for the coming storm. Others are pulled into reactionary action — doing whatever they can with rushed energy. And others are tired and detached — emotionally checked out from the moment.
There’s value in each response. Pre-grief can help us gain equanimity in the face of what’s coming. Acting keeps us from falling into despair and keep our muscles fresh for what’s next. And being detached may be healthy — a way that people are protecting themselves so they won’t spend the next 4 years fretting about every wild idea that comes out of Trump’s mouth.
We’re not saying that every strategy is the best of what we have to offer — but it’s okay to not be too hard on ourselves. This is a marathon. Pace yourself.
We’re also noticing something else that seems important. We think of it as a kind of spiritual conditioning. We see it most strongly this way: people are turning to other people. People are largely showing up for each other in grief and support and opening homes to care for each other. The direction we all need to go is more love, more neighborliness of that kind, and more open doors. So we want to affirm the ways people aren’t only strategizing and planning, but also spending time with people they trust and love and licking their wounds. This is a very human thing to do.
Over at Choose Democracy we’re taking an inhale after some intense weeks. We wanted to just take a moment to share what we’ve been up to and some resources we’re tracking that may be useful to you.
VIRAL RESOURCES
We’re grateful and blown away that Daniel’s article on 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won has gone viral with over 1.3 million views. It’s a helpful piece to acknowledge different roles and ways of processing.
It’s since been reprinted thousands of times. This has led to many follow-up interviews, three we wanted to highlight: Daniel talked more about the roles on The Authoritarian Podcast and talked in depth through each of the key points with the podcast The Majority Report. And lastly, adrienne marie brown and Autumn Brown’s podcast (How to Survive the End of the World) had a longer-view flowing conversation about where we are.
Waging Nonviolence published some follow-up articles by nonviolent expert Maria Stephan on How we can meet the challenges of authoritarianism and from movement strategist George Lakey: Can nonviolence struggle defeat a dictator? This database emphatically says yes.
Over 80,000 people have downloaded the trainings Daniel and Eileen Flanagan put together. The agendas are for trainings you can adapt/use in a Trump era — from action security to strategic escalation to mutual aid. (You can some of those below — everything is at WhatIfTrumpWins.org.)
Plus coaching hundreds of groups (contributing to some of the guides below). So yes, it’s been a busy time for us.
Lastly, the talented David Fernandes helped us turn the wordy article into short videos. Please share! These videos take the wisdom of Daniel’s viral article into bite-sized videos: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. (Likely our final post on some of these channels!)
Please share to help get the videos out!
Be kind to each other in these times.
Warmly,
– Choose Democracy
List Training Agendas
Skill-Based Training Modules for Trump Era
Strategic Escalation in a Trump Era
Sense-making and Vision: how did we get here?
Action Security and De-escalation
How to talk with people you might disagree with
Mutual Aid 101
Harnessing Our Power to End Political Violence